Regenerative Food Systems to Restore Urban-Rural Relationships: Insights from the Concepción Metropolitan Area Foodshed (Chile)

Ana Zazo-Moratalla, Isidora Troncoso-González and Andrés Moreira-Muñoz
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Ana Zazo-Moratalla: Department of Planning and Urban Design, Universidad del Bio-Bio, Av. Collao 1202, Concepción 4030000, Chile
Isidora Troncoso-González: Department of Planning and Urban Design, Universidad del Bio-Bio, Av. Collao 1202, Concepción 4030000, Chile
Andrés Moreira-Muñoz: Instituto de Geografía, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Av. Brasil 2241, Valparaíso 2340000, Chile

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 10, 1-22

Abstract: Cities, in recent years, have seen their functional and metabolic relationships with their agrarian hinterland being either broken off completely or substantially damaged. Within this context, Local Food Systems (LFS) can play a key role in restoring the supply relationships under regenerative assumptions. This paper analyses LFS within the Concepción Metropolitan Area (CMA) as a representative case of Metropolitan Areas in Chile. The aim of the paper is to evaluate whether LFS are regenerating sustainable rural-urban relationships, and to accomplish this goal, foodsheds have been used as a methodological tool to both characterise and represent food traceability. For this purpose, three quantitative foodshed indicators have been applied and three qualitative spatial analytical categories of the Regenerative Food Systems (RFS) defined to decode the behaviour of LFS in the CMA. The proposed method has been successful as an initial exploratory attempt to characterize the regenerative potential of RFS. The results highlight that LFS in the CMA are certainly restoring relationships between the city and its surrounding farmland by establishing new and renewed supply linkages. Further, the application of this method has shed light on some key aspects that show how an LFS is being converted into a potential RFS.

Keywords: Local Food Systems; diversity; flexibility; self-reliance; local scale (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:10:p:2892-:d:233121

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